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would seem that the only things that are dead to date are plant cuttings and I would like to keep it that way, please.’
    It was something on his wish list he was destined to remember for a long time.

    ‘That you, Anthony?’ Jack Haines had reluctantly picked up the telephone to ring one of his professional customers and he wasn’t enjoying the conversation.
    ‘It is,’ a throaty voice came down the telephone in reply.
    ‘It doesn’t sound like you.’
    ‘Well, it is,’ insisted the voice testily. ‘I’m a bit chesty, that’s all.’
    ‘It’s Jack Haines from the nursery here.’ Haines groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted was an Anthony Berra under the weather and in a low mood. ‘I’ve got a bit of bad news for you, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Tell me.’ Anthony Berra was a thrusting young landscape designer beginning to be very popular with the landed gentry of the county of Calleshire and starting to be quite an important user of the nursery too.
    ‘You’re not going to like it.’ Haines swallowed uneasily while he waited for the man to finish coughing. Although still with his name to make in the landscape design world, Anthony Berra was nothing if not business-like and rather formal into the bargain.
    ‘How bad?’ asked Berra shortly when he had recovered his breath.
    ‘Bad.’ Jack Haines told him about all the damaged plants in the greenhouses.
    ‘Good God, man, you don’t mean to say that I’ve lost the lot?’
    Gloomily, the nurseryman admitted that the majority of the plants ordered by Berra for his client, Admiral Catterick, and all of those being grown for the Lingards at the Grange were now either dead or dying. ‘And some of those for Benedict Feakins too.’
    Anthony Berra took a deep breath and said frostily, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to the Lingards, Jack, if I can’t get their Mediterranean garden fixed in time for their garden party in June. It was part of their contract with me that it would be.’
    ‘I’ve been ringing round everywhere trying get replacements,’ Haines admitted, ‘but it won’t be easy. Not at this time of the year.’
    ‘I shouldn’t think it will,’ retorted Berra crisply, ‘considering the effort I put in to ordering everything exactly as I wanted it for my planting plans for their newproject. You don’t pick up plants such as Strelitzia let alone Gardenia and Bouganvillia from any old nursery anywhere in East Calleshire.’
    Half-heartedly Jack Haines muttered something about insurance.
    ‘Mine or yours?’ asked Berra on the instant.
    ‘Yours,’ said Haines gruffly. ‘I’ve never even insured the orchids. I’ve lost all of them too.’
    Anthony Berra wasn’t interested in orchids and made that clear. ‘What I’m interested in, Jack, is that greenhouse of yours that had my plants in it and no, I’m not insured.’
    ‘Pity.’
    ‘Actually,’ drawled Berra a little unpleasantly, ‘since I hadn’t actually bought the plants yet I would have thought the loss was entirely yours. Not mine.’
    ‘I grew them especially for you exactly to your precise order, didn’t I?’ responded Jack Haines, torn between keeping Anthony Berra as a customer and minimising his own loss. ‘Especially those citrus trees and the palms, let alone the Mimosa.’
    The landscape designer came back on the instant. ‘I don’t know who left your greenhouse doors open, Jack, and I don’t care, but I can assure you it wasn’t me.’ There was an uneasy pause and then Berra went on in a more mollifying tone, ‘It isn’t quite as easy as that, anyway. You must know what these particular clients of mine are like. I should think the whole village does.’
    Jack Haines had to admit that he did know what the Lingards of Pelling Grange were like and so did everyone else in the locality. ‘Not exactly easy people,’ he agreed.
    ‘Especially the wife,’ added Berra, opening up a little.
    ‘Quite difficult, actually,’ conceded the nurseryman.